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THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION STATED.

It will strike some readers with a sense of hopelessness, this demand for a reason in our faith. A special and very extensive knowledge is required, it seems, to test the very positive assertion that some have chosen to make regarding the "explosion" of the Christian faith in the matter of Creation.

We are told in effect that every thing goes by itself—that given some first cause, about which we know, and can know, nothing, directly primordial matter appears on the scene, and the laws of sequence and action which observed experience has formulated and is progressively formulating are given, then nothing else is required; no governance, no control, and no special design. So that in principle a Creator and Providence are baseless fancies; and this is further borne out by the fact, that when the Christian faith ventures on details as to the mode of Creation it is certainly and demonstrably wrong. If these propositions are to be controverted, it must be in the light of a knowledge which a large body of candid and earnest believers do not possess.

Fortunately, however, the labours of many competent to judge have placed within the reach of the unscientific but careful student, the means of knowing what the conclusions of Science really are, as far as they affect the questions we have to consider. At least, any inquirer can, with a little care and patient study, put himself in a position to know where the difficulty or difficulties lie, and what means there are of getting over them. His want of technical knowledge will not be in his way, so far as his just appreciation of the position is concerned. Without pretending to take up ground which has already been occupied by capable writers whose books can easily be consulted, I may usefully recapitulate in a simple form, and grouped in a suitable order, some of the points best worth noting.

The theory of cosmical evolution is not, in its general idea, a new thing. The sort of evolution, however, that was obscurely shadowed forth by the early sages of India (much as it is the fashion now to allude to it) really stands in no practical relation to the modern and natural theory which is associated with the name of CHARLES DARWIN, and which has been further taken up by Mr. HERBERT SPENCER and others as the foundation for a complete scheme of cosmic philosophy. The theory is now, in its main features, admitted by every one. But there are a few who would push it beyond its real ascertained limits, and would substitute fancies for facts; they are not content to leave the lacunae, which undoubtedly do exist, but fill them up by hypothesis,^[7] passing by easy steps of forgetfulness from the "it was possibly," "it was likely to have been," to the "it must have been," and "it was"!

To all such extensions we must of course object; there are gaps in the scheme which can be filled in with really great probability, and in such cases there will be no harm done in admitting the probability, while still acknowledging it as such. An overcautious lawyer-like captiousness of spirit in such matters will help no cause and serve no good purpose. Nor is it at all difficult in practice to draw the line and say what is fairly admissible conjecture and what is not. There are other gaps, however, that at present, no real analogy, no fair inferential process, can bridge over; and to all speculations on such subjects, if advanced as more than bare and undisguised guesses, objection must be taken.

If this one line had been fairly and firmly adhered to from the first, it can hardly be doubted that much of the acrimony of controversy would have been avoided. It is just as essential at the present moment to insist on the point as ever. But to proceed. Stated in the extreme form, the theory is, that given matter as a beginning, that matter is thenceforth capable, by the aid of fixed and self-working laws, to produce and result in, all the phenomena of life—whether plant, animal, or human—which we see around us. Matter developes from simple to complex forms, growing by its own properties, in directions determined by the circumstances and surroundings of its existence.

If I may put this a little less in the abstract, but more at length, I should describe it thus^[8]:—

Astronomers, while watching the course of the stars, have frequently observed in the heavens what they call nebulae. With the best telescopes these look like patches of gold-dust or luminous haze in the sky. Some nebulae, it is supposed, really consist of whole systems of stars and suns, but at so enormous a distance that with our best glasses we cannot make more out of them than groups of apparent "star-dust" But other nebulae do not appear to be at this extreme distance, and therefore cannot consist of large bodies. And when their light is examined with the aid of a spectroscope, it gives indications that such nebulae are only masses of vapour, incandescent, or giving out light on account of their being in a burning or highly heated condition.

Now, it is supposed that, in the beginning of the world, there was, in space, such a nebula or mass of incandescent vapour, which, as it was destined to cool down and form a world, philosophers have called "cosmic gas."

This cosmic gas, in the course of time, began to lose its heat, and consequently to liquefy and solidify, according to the different nature of its components; and thus a globe with a solid crust was formed, the surface of which was partly dry and partly occupied by water, and diversified by the abundant production of the various earths, gases, metals, and other substances with which we are familiar. These substances, in time, and by the slow action of their own laws and properties, combined or separated and produced further forms. But to come at once to the important part of the theory, we must at once direct our attention to four substances; these would certainly, it is said (and that no doubt is quite true) be present; they are oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon. The first three would be, when the earth assumed anything like its present conditions of temperature and air-pressure, invisible gases, as they are at present; the fourth is a substance which forms the basis of charcoal, and which we see in a nearly pure form crystallized in the diamond.

Now, if these substances are brought together under certain appropriate conditions, the oxygen and hydrogen can combine to form water; the carbon and the oxygen will form carbonic acid; while nitrogen will join with hydrogen to form that pungent smelling substance with which we are familiar as ammonia. Again, let us suppose that three compound substances—water, carbonic acid, and ammonia—are present together with appropriate conditions; it is said that they will combine to form a gummy transparent matter, which is called protoplasm. This protoplasm may be found in small shapeless lumps, or it may be found enclosed in cells, and in various beautifully shaped coverings, and it is also found in the blood, and in all growing parts or organs of all animals and plants of every kind whatsoever.

Protoplasm, then, is the physical basis of life. Simple, uniform, shapeless protoplasm, combined out of the substances just named, first came into existence; and as, however simple or shapeless, it always exhibits the property of life, it can henceforth grow and develop from simpler to ever increasingly complex forms, without any help but that of surrounding circumstances—the secondary causes which we see in operation around us.

If some readers should say they have never seen protoplasm, I may remind them where every one has, at some time or another, met with it. If you cut a stick of new wood from a hedge, and peel off the young bark, you know that the bark comes off easily and entire, leaving a clean white wand of wood in your hand; but the wand feels sticky all over. This sticky stuff is nothing more than transparent growing protoplasm, which lies close under the inner bark.

At first, the materialist holds, protoplasm appeared in very simple forms, just such as can still be found within the sea, and in ponds. But the lower organized forms of life are extremely unstable, and a different environment will always tend to evoke continuous small changes, so that there may be advance in forms of all kinds. For if by chance^[9] some creature exhibits a variation which is favourable to it in the circumstances in which it is placed, that creature will be fitter than the others which have not that variation. And so the former will survive, and as they multiply, their descendants will inherit the peculiarity. Thus, in the course of countless generations, change will succeed change, till creatures of quite a complex structure and specialized form have arisen. As the circumstances of life are always infinitely various, the developments take place in many different directions; some fit the creature for life in deep seas, some for flying in the air, some for living in holes and crevices, some for catching prey by swift pursuit, others for catching it by artful contrivance, and so forth. Many changes will also arise from protective necessity: if an insect happens to be like a dead leaf, it will escape the notice of birds which would snap up a conspicuously coloured one; and so the dull-coloured will survive and perpetuate his kind, while the others are destroyed. On the other hand, beauty in colour and form may have its use. This is chiefly exhibited in the preference which the females of a species show for the adorned and showy males.

Supposing an organism developed so far as to be a bird, but only with dull or ugly feathers. By accident one male bird, say, gets a few bright-coloured feathers on his head. Here his appearance will attract birds of the other sex; and then by the law of heredity, his offspring are sure to repeat the coloured feathers, till at last a regularly bright-crested species-arises. In this way natural variability, acted on by the necessities of environment (which cause the survival of the fittest specimens) and the principle of heredity, viz., that the offspring repeat the features of the parents, aided by the principle of sexual selection, have been the origin and cause of all the species we see in the world.

Thus we have an unbroken series—certain substances condensing out of cosmic vapour, some of them combining to form the variety of rocks, soils, metals, &c., and others giving rise to protoplasm which grows' and develops into a thousand shapes and hues, of insect, fish, reptile, bird, and beast.

And then it is, that charmed with the completeness and symmetry of such a theory, and overlooking the difficulties that crop up here and here—demanding some Power from without to bridge them over—certain extreme theorists have rushed to the conclusion that in all this there is no need of any external Creator or Providence—nothing but what we call secondary causes, ordinary causes which we see at work around us all day and every day.

How inconceivable, they add, is the truth of the Book of Genesis, which asserts the successive creation of fully-formed animals by sudden acts of command; and all accomplished in a few days at the beginning of the world's human history!

This I believe to be a fair outline, though of course a very rough and general one, of the Theory of Evolution as regards the forms of matter and living organisms. Now it will at once strike the candid reader, that even granted the whole of the scheme as stated, there is nothing in it that has any answer to the objection—But may I not believe that a wise Creator conceived and established the whole plan—first creating MATTER and FORCE, then superadding LIFE at a certain stage, and then drawing out the type and design according to which everything was to grow and develop? Is not such a production and such a design the true essence of Creation? Can all these things happen without such aid? Let us then look more closely at some of the steps in the evolution just described. And let us stop at the very beginning—the first term of the series.

We may agree (in the absence of anything leading to a contrary conclusion) that matter may first have appeared as a cosmic gas, or incandescent vapour in space. It is probable, if not certain, that our earth is a mass that has only cooled down on the surface, the centre being still hot and to some extent, at any rate, molten; and in the sun we have the case of an enormous globe surrounded with a photosphere, as it is called—a blaze of incandescent substances, which our spectroscopes tell us are substances such as we have on earth now in cooled or condensed condition—iron, oxygen, hydrogen, and other such forms of matter.

First of all, how did any substance, however vapoury and tenuous, come to exist, when previously there was nothing?

If we admit, that there was a time when even cosmic gas did not exist, then there must have been an Agent, whose fiat caused the change. And as that Agent does not obviously belong to the material order, it must belong to the spiritual or non-material; for the two orders together exhaust the possibilities of existence. If, however, it is urged that "primal matter"—cosmic vapour—containing the "potentiality" of all existence, is eternal and alway existed of itself, then we are brought face to face with innumerable difficulties. In the first place, the existence of matter is not the only difficulty to be got over; not the only dead-lock along the line. We pass it over and go on for a time, and then we come to another—the introduction of LIFE. I will not pause to consider that here; we shall see presently that it is impossible to regard life as merely a quality or property of matter. When we have passed that, we have a third stoppage, the introduction of Reason or Intelligence; and then a fourth, the introduction of the Spiritual faculties, which cannot be placed on the same footing as mere reason. So that to get over the first point, and dispense with a Cause or a Creator of matter, is of no avail: it is incredible that there should be no Creator of matter, but that there should be a Creator of life—an Imparter of reason, an Endower of soul.

But let us revert to the first stage and look at the nature of MATTER.

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